Dear Parents,
In this weeks Social Skills session we are covering the topic “Body in the Group”. The concept of body in the group aims to promote awareness of what it looks like when we are all focusing on the same thing and working together, and how others may feel or think about us if our body is not in the group. It aims to address how our physical presence (or lack of) communicates our intentions to others.
The concept of body in the group supports children in developing social and self awareness. Often in social situations we display our “body in the group” through appropriate eye contact, physical distance, body language and facial expressions to our peers. Through these things our communication partners can see that we are listening, paying attention and want to interact with them. If our body is “out of the group” and these things are not shown to those talking to us, it presents ourselves as not wanting to listen or interact with our peers. This likely leads to them having negative feelings or thoughts about us.
As part of this weeks activity, students will listen to the book Body in the Group and look at the pictures of the characters and their facial expressions when one’s body is not in the group. At the end, there is an activity called a Think Sheet that has some questions to support the understanding of this social skills concept. Students can also write some dot points or draw what they think it means when your body is in the group; and what this looks like when we are at school. For example, during mat time we know our body is in the group because our hands are to ourselves, we are quiet, we are looking at our teacher and we are sitting close enough to hear her instead of on the other side of the classroom. Our body would not be in the group if we were looking or walking around the classroom, talking when our teacher is talking, playing with something on the floor and not listening to what our teacher is saying.
During the week, it would be great to have discussions about “Body in the group”, and what this looks like when playing a game or talking with your child. Think about talking over one another, not looking at the person who is talking, walking away when someone is talking to you etc. Highlighting these by saying “I can see your body is not in the group because you are __ and ___” reinforces this concept to our children, and provides them with a model or a reference to increase their own self awareness that is required to participate socially effectively.
We hope the students enjoy this week’s topic 🙂
Miss Walker (Speech Pathologist) and Miss Bruns (Occupational Therapist)